


The Planetary Lanterns

by islasands



Series: Lambski [44]
Category: Adam Lambert (Musician)
Genre: M/M, Time off
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-29
Updated: 2012-04-29
Packaged: 2017-11-04 12:47:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/393996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/islasands/pseuds/islasands
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adam and Sauli are spending time with their family and friends. </p><p>This is a simple 'slice of life' story. Nothing flash. </p><p>You may or may not want to listen to the music I listened to while I was writing this story. It is Francesco Tarrega's Capricho Arabe, played by  Julian Bream.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Planetary Lanterns

"Capricho Arabe" by Francesco Tarrega 

  


Played by Julian Bream

  


Adam was pleasantly tired. So was the toddler who was standing on his lap, thumb in mouth, looking over his shoulder so he could watch his mother coming in and out of the house with platters of food. The boy changed the position of his feet and Adam had to adjust one of them to stop it crushing his testicles. The toddler turned to look at Adam. Their faces were almost touching. The child took his thumb out of his mouth and hooked it in the corner of Adam’s mouth. He pulled it hard. He looked away, making an ‘O’ with his mouth, and vigorously jigged up and down. He suddenly stopped and made his body go rigid. He released Adam’s mouth. He stared at Adam and Adam stared back. Each of their stares conveyed a recognition that was completely and empathically beyond analysis. “Me,” said the boy’s eyes. “Me,” said Adam’s. Through their eyes their minds crossed the barriers of age and experience to briefly hold hands as equals in irreproachable self-love. Then the thumb returned to its owner’s mouth, and they each returned their attention to the objects of their favour, the boy, to his mother, and Adam to the world of his family and friends.

And to his love, Sauli, who was cooking on the barbecue. He watched him talking to his fellow cooks, occasionally bursting out laughing. A mutual older friend reached out to pat his shoulder as he walked past and Sauli smiled appreciatively at the person’s retreating back. Really, he had the best smile in the world, with more variations of expression than he had ever seen in any smile. The best one of all was his sleepy smile, the one that occurred when he woke in the morning to discover Adam was staring at him. He liked doing that. He liked waking first and lying there looking at his face.

The boy in his arms suddenly put his head on Adam’s shoulder. Adam tucked an arm beneath his bottom so that he could stop standing and relax. The child was grateful. He leant all his weight against him.

Behind him Adam could hear his mother’s laughter tinkling like a bell. He liked her laughter. It had notes to it. It ran up and down the scale of happiness as though she had a xylophone in her vocal chords. He closed his eyes. The toddler, with his free hand, had begun to blindly explore the articles of his face. First he located his nostrils and pinched the bridge between his thumb and forefinger. It made Adam’s eyes smart. Then the little hand smacked his nose repeatedly and on the last smack gripped it hard and pulled it with all his might. Adam burst out laughing. The boy sat back and looked at him. “My poor nose,” Adam said to him. The boy smiled a small smile. He liked it when his physical powers were acknowledged. But then the smile abruptly left his face. Something about Adam’s crinkly eyes had given him a serious emotion. He bent his face forward and planted a cool, fragrant kiss on Adam’s lips. Adam gave the boy a squeeze. A friend drew up a chair next to him and they began to chat and the boy decided he wanted to get on her lap.

Adam talked but his attention was skimming the surface of the conversation. He had switched off his filters for managing the stimuli of life and was drinking it all in, unabridged, unexpurgated, undiluted. A row of lanterns strung between the porch posts suddenly lit up and showed themselves to be planets, a song began to play that he really liked, a rogue flame suddenly burst out of the barbecue and made the people standing around it draw back. The soft darkness of evening seemed to arrive out of the blue, as though drawn by that flame. A friend with a newborn baby came and stood in front him. She was holding her son’s feet on the palm of one of her hands and pumping his legs in time to the music. She laughed at something Adam said and bent over him, son in arms, and kissed him. Her hair fell on his face and the smell of its perfume, mixed with notes of infant vomit, entered his nose. As she stood up he noticed how the freckles sprinkled below her throat had not found purchase on the milky white of her breasts. He bent sideways a little so that his gaze, as though summoned, could see past the flowers of her dress to where Sauli was standing, working at the barbecue. Sure enough, he was looking at him. His heart shifted inside him. A plate of nibbles suddenly passed in front of him and he looked up at the host to smile and politely shake his head. He looked over at Sauli again. Good. He had not yet looked away. He was holding a pair of tongs. He was wearing an apron. The colours in the tattoos on his arm were incandescent in the evening light. Adam smiled at him, aware that even at a distance the blue of Sauli’s eyes had the power to make him feel completely visible. Not nakedly so, and not inside-out either. But _clearly_ visible. He sighed with the pleasure of being the apple of those eyes.

Sauli returned to his task and Adam looked up at the sky. The moon was so neatly cut in half it had to have been done with a knife. The silhouettes of the trees on the perimeter of the yard were similarly so crisply outlined they too must have been cut out with a blade. The hand of his mother, who was now standing behind his chair, appeared on his shoulder and he briefly laid his cheek on it. He looked at the planet lanterns. Each was a different colour, each had the markings of land and ocean masses. He looked down at his hands that were resting on his knees. He had a new ring with an olivine stone. He twisted it so that it sat centrally on his finger. He turned his hand this way and that to look at the lights captured in the stone. He scooted his hands back and forth over his thighs. A cat went past, its tail on end, the tip curling over. It was possibly the ugliest cat he had ever seen, white with black blotches, one of which, situated in the nose area, gave the cat an uncanny resemblance to Hitler. A little girl suddenly came into view. She held out her hand. He got up and let her lead him to the trestle tables which had been joined to accommodate a large crowd, and were covered in white cloths, flowers, candles, and with foods that were cold and hot, and with carafes of water and bottles of wine.

He poured himself and his brother glasses of wine and they joked and talked as people sat down. Sauli was bringing the barbecued items to the table. He moved things around to make room for them. Adam’s mother, already seated, looked up at Sauli. She patted his back while she helped shift things on the table. Adam put his drink down and went inside to choose some music suitable for dining. He was distracted from his task by the extensiveness of the CD collection. An arm slid under his jacket and around his waist. He turned to Sauli.

“I cooked you a fish,” Sauli said complacently. “A whole one with both eyes on one side of its face.” Adam put his arm around him. “Mmm,” he said. He carried on looking at the library of music.

“It is a bad looking fish.” Sauli went on. “I hope it tastes good...”

Adam looked at him. “Why? What’s bad about it?”

Sauli screwed up his nose. “It has the look of someone standing on it.” He shrugged. “But no-one did. It was born that way. Flat out and shit ugly.”

Adam laughed outright. “Some things just are,” he said.

Sauli picked up a CD and looked at it, front and back. “I’m glad I’m not one of those things. Or you might not love me.”

Adam made his choice of music to accompany the dinner. He loaded it in the player. He looked at Sauli. He noticed that he smelled of smoke. His nose had a mark on it. A curl had flopped down onto his forehead. “I would still love you,” he said, “even if your nose was cut off.” Sauli, gratified, grinned up at him. “But at night time,” Adam added, tapping the expendable nose with his forefinger, “when we go to bed, I might have to put a bag on your head, - if you don’t mind.”

Sauli stood on his toes to kiss him. “I won’t mind,” he laughed. “It will be – perhaps - sexy for you.” Adam guffawed. Sauli got the giggles.

“Miten menee, Sauli?”a childish voice said. Two young girls wearing a lot of makeup had come down the stairs. Sauli grinned. He answered them in Finnish and they ran out the door shrieking. The toddler who earlier had been sitting on Adam’s lap suddenly appeared in the doorway. He walked towards them purposefully, full of pride in his uprightness. Adam reached down his arms but the child pouted. “Sally,” he said, looking up at Sauli.

Sauli picked him up. The boy smiled sweetly at Adam, gloating over the effectiveness of his rejection. Adam pulled a suitably crestfallen face. He followed them outside, his hand on Sauli’s back. He noticed the tiny planets were swaying in the evening breeze. 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
